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Overview
In many communities, cleaning up freight is a priority environmental justice issue. Freight sources like trucks, trains, ships, and cargo equipment emit large amounts of diesel pollution, which is a known carcinogen and contributes to asthma, cancer, and premature death. These toxic health impacts are disproportionately borne by the low-income and communities of color overburdened by an overconcentration of freight facilities like ports, railyards, highways, and warehouses. Freight infrastructure also can have other adverse impacts, such as blocking communities from coastal access.
However, without directly impacted communities at the helm of designing solutions to these problems, advocates run the risk of replicating and re-enforcing the same structures that have led to these injustices and inequities in the first place. Community lawyering is an important way that attorneys with relevant knowledge can respectfully support community-led campaigns and strategies and work with organizers, community-based organizations, and other allies to a healthier and more just future.
Why You Should Attend
This panel will provide insights into the environmental justice impacts from port development by featuring community-based campaigns to address the disproportionate impact of ports on the surrounding communities. The panelists will share insights from community campaigns for healthier and more transparent ports and lessons on how lawyers should (and should not) show up in support of community-led campaigns.
What You Will Learn
After completing this program, participants will be able to:
- Understand how to approach community lawyering thoughtfully and respectfully
- Learn about environmental justice in the context of healthy port campaigns
- Gain insight on how grassroots campaigns can be developed and how lawyers can add capacity to campaigns
- Hear directly from organizers on coalition building and how lawyers can let organizing take the lead
- Understand different advocacy strategies to address freight pollution and impacts
- Learn updates on provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 intended to address environmental justice and air pollution at ports.
Who Should Attend
This program is intended for attorneys and legal professionals supporting or looking to support any client with environmental justice issues or with an interest in developing relationships with frontline communities and organizations.
Special Feature:
Scholarships are available to attend this program.
Program Level:
Overview
Prerequisites:
An interest in environmental justice issues and learning impactful community lawyering strategies.
Advanced Prep:
None